Activision Publishing was all too happy to tell the world that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 raked in first sales of more than $400 million, qualifying it as the "biggest entertainment launch ever," at least in terms of sheer dollars. Now Activision wants you to know that MW3 just "shattered theatrical box office, book, and videogame sales records for five-day worldwide sell-through in dollars" with five-day sales reaching $750 million.

The Call of Duty franchise has been nothing short of a cash cow. Previously, the five-day entertainment sales record belonged to Black Ops with $650 million in sales, and prior to that, Modern Warfare 2 held the record with $550 million.

"With $775 million of sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in its first five days, Call of Duty has become the first entertainment property in history to set five-day launch records for three consecutive years across all forms of entertainment," said Robert Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard. "Life-to-date retail sales for the Call of Duty franchise have exceeded $6 billion worldwide, which makes Call of Duty one of the most valuable entertainment properties in the world. We expect continued sales momentum, as reviews and audience enthusiasm suggest that this is the best Call of Duty game that we have ever made. Online play for Modern Warfare 3 is at record levels and we continue to see high online play for both Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which ranked as the No. 2 and No. 4 top-played Xbox Live games for the week of November 7, according to Major Nelson."

Videogames like MW3 cost considerably more than a movie ticket, and so it's easier to rack up bigger sales figures. But no matter how you slice it, three-quarters of a billion dollars in less than a week is impressive.

Comments

Wow, so you have a bunch of sheep that hand over their money to you like zombies. I guess they find that suitable for PR bragging. When it comes to actual game quality Call of Duty can't even come close to comparing to other major titles like Skyrim or Mass Effect.

I'm glad Activision was able to succeed using the Apple model of "take old tech and pretend its new, then profit through lies." Or in this case: take MW2, re-do the (4 hour) campaign, spend a few hours making new MP maps, shuffle the MP perks around, and add a already worn-out "survival mode". Then, to wrap it all up, they took their half-assed re-do and used an old game engine to present it and said "here's our brand spankin new game that will revolutionize online gaming again!". CoD was fun for a year or two, but they are officially beating an extremely dead horse (or tauntaun...if you prefer) and should focus their extensive design talent on fresh, new ideas.

Actually Bobbie even admitted that the new game "iterates rather than innovates". They're not even trying to pass it off as something revolutionary which makes it even more pathetic when you see how much these titles are making.

Your product cost the consumer 5-6 times the price of other forms of "Entertainment". Of course your sales are going to look ballooned. To bad for little Bobby investors and Wall Street aren't fooled by his irrelevant hype press releases as evidenced by their stock falling by $1.88 since 11/8. Me and my bloated wallet will start caring when he actually has a product that sells more *Units* than his competition in the other genres besides video games. Went to buy 10,000 shares of their stock when I got my inheritance a few years ago and my investor strongly advised against it. Glad he did as I'd of lost quite a few Benjamins.

I do not understand all the hype behind Modern Warfare anything. I compared the graphics of the two, and clearly Battlefield 3 takes the cake. Not only are the graphics better, but Battlefield 3 is much more life-like than Modern Warfare.

wow. i agree with you completely. the textures and graphics in bf3 arent even comparable to mw3. and ive never, even in the first mw (which i think is the best of the series), felt the complete immersion into the game as i have in battlefield. hell, bc2 is better than mw3. the visuals, sounds, and physics are so much more realistic. i cant even stress enough about the sounds. your and other players characters shouting, echoes of gunfire, explosions, its so incredibly believeable. any call of duty game ive played feels like exactly that, a game.and before anyone calls me a fanboy, i dont own either bf3 or mw3. i just can tell the difference between realism and, well... whatever call of duty is.

Call of Duty is unique in that it is a perfect game. Every aspect of it (especially the multiplayer) makes you want to keep playing and show that noob-tuber whos boss. They're probably saying 'if it ain't broke, dont fix it.' They're afraid that if they even update the graphics a whole lot that it will run too slow, people will compain about things (like the way to bright freakin lights in BF3 that blind you in daylight). Their maps are amazing, too. However I din't buy MW3, because it's the same game as MW2 and I'm still playing that

I find a lot of people complaining about the flashlights, but I think they are OK, they only work in close range like they are supposed to do, but outside and at longer distances it just makes it easier for me to spot them and kill them.

There has been so many times when someone I didn't see just shines his light at me and I just aim at the light and get an easy kill.

It's like everything in the game, find a work-around, many people complain about the mortars too, but I find close to useless (except for the smoke shells)

People want realism but when it's inconvenient they complain. I think it's cool and gives you a strategic advantage over others. If you're just sitting there or running around on your own of course your going to get toasted when they blind you with a light. Then you deserve it.

COD4 and MW2 were alright games and pretty fun in their own respect, but it needs to end. There are just too many COD games out now and they just recycle the same thing over and over again. Modern combat shooters need to go the way that the WWII shooter has gone.

Battlefield is an entirely different animal compared to Call of Duty in the online sense. And it basically starts with the fundamentals: How do you rack up points in Battlefield 3? I'll give you a hint, your K/D ratio is irrelevant. I've seen, more often than not, guys in first place with a 1:1 or less K/D ratio. Guys with a higher K/D ratio usually float in the bottom half.

BF and CoD are different games. It's idiots like you that are sapping the market of any decent FPS's, and getting everyones panties in a bunch. They are different games. Always have been. Although they may not always will be, because EA is pushing DICE to create clones of CoD to try and take them down. They see the publicity, and the blind fanboyism that pushes the games.

TL;DR: Get over yourself. It's just a game. Both, VERY different games.

The problem is that EA did make a COD clone and it flopped utterly, its called medal of honor. I personally don't want a COD clone, but EA is obsessed with the franchise rival. The more they emulate it the more they fail. The thing that people don't take into account is that COD is a CONSOLE GAME not a PC game in intent. BF3 unfortunately is neither but the PC is still the main focus albeit with this iteration just barely. EA is ruining the BF franchise because of their own jealousy of Activision. Classic example of this is no squad VOIP in the PC version (which is the number one requested fix/update on the forums). They also screwed up royally by going to war with STEAM, activision could care less about which distro method they use as long as their product get sold. Talk about a massive loss in potential sales on EA's part. What a bunch of retards. Oh well good luck EA, I hope you get a clue sooner than later.